Answers to Questions About New York

Q.I have a two-part question. What New York City high school sent the most players to Major League Baseball? Also, not counting the pro stadiums, what park, field, school playground or sandlot in New York bred the most major leaguers?

A. Lafayette High School, on Benson Avenue near Stillwell Avenue in Gravesend, Brooklyn, had 13 of its student-athletes become players in the major leagues, including Sandy Koufax, a Hall of Famer, according to Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. John Franco, also a Lafayette graduate, is in the Mets’ Hall of Fame. No other school matches Lafayette, Ms. Feinberg wrote in an e-mail.

According to Ms. Feinberg, other New York student-athletes who became Hall of Famers include Waite Hoyt of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, Whitey Ford of Aviation High School in Queens, Hank Greenberg of Monroe High School in the Bronx, Lou Gehrig of Commerce High School in Manhattan, Phil Rizzuto of Richmond Hill High School in Queens and Rod Carew of George Washington High School in Manhattan, which Manny Ramirez also attended.

As for ball fields, the winner is most likely the Parade Grounds in Brooklyn, at the southernmost tip of Prospect Park, about a mile southwest of where Ebbets Field stood. Named for its use as a drill field for Union soldiers during the Civil War, the 40-acre Parade Grounds once had 13 baseball fields, some set so close to one another that center fielders in different games sometimes played 10 to 15 feet apart, often facing each other, Lawrence S. Ritter recalled in “East Side West Side: Tales of New York Sporting Life, 1910-1960” (1998).

Bob McGee, author of “The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers” (2005), wrote in an e-mail, “The Parade Grounds, absolutely, not because it was the neighborhood park for all of those that played there, but because it was a boroughwide showcase for young teenage talent in the city’s most populous borough, which, coincidentally, had far and away traditionally the greatest number of amateur teams.”

Q.I know about the borscht belt in the Catskills. But the other day someone used a phrase I had never heard. What are the Irish Alps?

A. Centered on East Durham in Greene County, N.Y., they are an area of the upper Catskills that became popular with Irish-Americans escaping New York City’s sweltering summers in the early 20th century, before air-conditioning, air travel and assimilation opened up wider vistas. Although less heavily developed and less widely recognized than the borscht belt, with its giant resort hotels like the Concord and Grossinger’s attracting mostly Jewish guests, the East Durham area had a similarly intense ethnic identity.

“With a plethora of resorts, boardinghouses and pubs featuring top musicians and popular show bands of the time, by 1939 the Catskills was a popular holiday destination on par with Rockaway,” Brian Donohue wrote on the Web site of Catskill Mountainkeeper, an environmental group. “The area became a hub of traditional Irish music, and, in its prime, there were 17 places in East Durham where one could hear music seven days a week.”